I have never come across a DVD player in Europe that can't play an NTSC disc (although they may exist). Even the oldest players I've seen have special modes to accomodate transcoding the NTSC colour signal for playback on select older PAL TVs.

As Eric said, getting an image to display on a TV will be a bigger issue than getting the player to play the disc. Even then, most TVs manufactured in the last 12-13 years should not have an issue displaying the 60hz scan rate. In fact, in the UK at least, it's not too uncommon to find music video DVDs in their original NTSC format.

And for those tv's and dvd players that will play ntsc in the uk, is the quality degraded somewhat you think? I noticed a person who reviewed the sex and the city dvd said it did not look good on their tv.

It depends how the TV is connected. Broadly speaking: no, the quality will not be degraded if a European user plays an NTSC disc.

In Europe, most DVD players are connected with the ubiquitous SCART connector. The default setting on just about every DVD player is to send Analog RGB video through the SCART terminal. The closest thing to this in America is the analogue Component Video RCA connectors, to give you an idea of what the picture quality is like (very good). Using this common method, there will be nothing wrong with the quality.

But, some users will have their player connected with a lesser quality method (Composite or S-Video). Or, they'll have it connected with SCART, but hooked up to an input on the TV which doesn't support RGB video, meaning that the TV will instead fall back to the Composite signal also sent through the SCART cable (for our purposes, this is identical to the user connecting the player with a Composite video cable).

If it's connected with Composite or S-Video, three things can happen. One, the player can output NTSC video as NTSC. On most TVs, this will give a decent quality picture. But, some old TVs will show this in black and white. And some really, really old ones will not be able to lock onto the 60hz scan-rate at all, and will display a distorted, fast scrolling picture.

Two, and this is the most common: the player will output the NTSC disc as PAL-60 (60hz video with PAL colour information). This setting is often made in the player's menus. This removes the "showing in black and white" problem, but the video is still 60hz, so again, on really old TVs, people will get the distorted, fast scrolling picture. Only now, it'll be a distorted, fast scrolling picture with bits of colour in it :)

Three, the player attempts to transcode the NTSC disc contents to real 50hz PAL, which will show on *any* TV in Europe. This only happens on a handful of newer players, and harms the quality (as such it can always be turned off). It will result in a juddery, sometimes poorly scaled (pixellated) image.

Whew - got all that? Most NTSC content is standards converted to 50hz timing for release in Europe, to avoid any hassle. Speaking from my videophile standpoint, this conversion does degrade the quality of the picture for all users, but not as badly as the player attempting to convert itself upon playback (what I described in the above paragraph).

For what it's worth, a lot of my non AV-geek friends have some Region 0 NTSC discs and have no problem playing them. The equipment that can't deal with them has probably been relegated to the attic by now. The decision to release NTSC content in Europe is ultimately up to the hassle involved of creating a second PAL converted disc, getting it tested replicated separately, etc...

"If it's connected with Composite or S-Video, three things can happen. One, the player can output NTSC video as NTSC. On most TVs, this will give a decent quality picture"

Dave, if it's outputting ntsc as ntsc, and the tv can display this, then the tv will display the original source resolution of 740x480, correct?
I think if the above is true, I would much prefer the viewer see that than view the PAL converted version, which has been changed to 740x576. The PAL version is "viewable" but frankly to me it just does not look very good. I think because the resolution had to be stretched out to be 740x576, it ends up with a "blurry" , not sharp look. And the conversion was done about as well as it can be done on software.
What I'm saying is, even if the colors are off and the PAL version is at 50hz, I would think the most change in quality is going to come from the changing of the resolution? Therefore, people overseas will get the best viewing experience by watching the NTSC version (those that do not have old tv's) as opposed to watching a PAL version which matches their color and Hz settings, but has a stretched image? Hopefully that makes sense.

"Dave, if it's outputting ntsc as ntsc, and the tv can display this, then the tv will display the original source resolution of 740x480, correct?"

Right, if the TV supports NTSC and the player is outputting NTSC, the setup is basically exactly the same as the average American viewer's.

No matter what sort of cable they have connected, one thing typically does not change: the scan-rate and timing of the signal being output. This is what causes the picture to scroll on very old TVs. It doesn't matter if they're connected using RGB SCART, Composite SCART, RCA Composite, S-Video jack... they're getting 480i video with a 60hz scan rate.

*Unless* the player is doing its own poor quality conversion to 50hz PAL, or unless you've authored a new version of the disc which is a converted PAL version anyway.

"I think if the above is true, I would much prefer the viewer see that than view the PAL converted version, which has been changed to 740x576. The PAL version is "viewable" but frankly to me it just does not look very good. I think because the resolution had to be stretched out to be 740x576, it ends up with a "blurry" , not sharp look. And the conversion was done about as well as it can be done on software."

I agree with you. Especially if your material contains a lot of fast motion, the NTSC-> PAL conversion can look a little shoddy. Video standards conversion is a whole different can of worms, the quality of the converters ranges hugely. Even on the very best (ultra-expensive) hardware converters like the Snell & Wilcox Alchemist, a videophile eye can spot the (slight) inferiority of the conversion. You pay a price for compatibility.

>> What I'm saying is, even if the colors are off and the PAL version is at 50hz, I would think the most change in quality is going to come from the changing of the resolution? Therefore, people overseas will get the best viewing experience by watching the NTSC version (those that do not have old tv's) as opposed to watching a PAL version which matches their color and Hz settings, but has a stretched image? Hopefully that makes sense.

Yes, that's pretty much it. NTSC video is best viewed as NTSC. PAL video is best viewed as PAL. Can I ask what software you've used for the standards conversion? I'm more of a Windows guy myself, but if you still wanted to make a PAL version, the best software converter I've come across is Grass Valley Procoder (aka Canopus Procoder).

I use a Mac, so I used a 3rd party filter called nattress and then compressor. I'll take a look at that one you mentioned.
I'm wondering, what do the American companies that have shows that are broadcast on television and then ported to DVD do? I suppose they use a super expensive hardware encoder like the one you mentioned? Or perhaps, they film in a format that makes for a better NTSC to Pal conversion?

"I'm wondering, what do the American companies that have shows that are broadcast on television and then ported to DVD do? I suppose they use a super expensive hardware encoder like the one you mentioned? Or perhaps, they film in a format that makes for a better NTSC to Pal conversion?"

They'll likely feed to it to a converter such as the Snell Alchemist PhC. That, I believe, operates in one of two modes:

The Video mode is for video camera generated material or similar, that is, when both fields in the picture are not the same. It essentially "remaps time", if that makes sense, and uses motion vector technology to make sure the results are as accurate as possible.

The film mode recognises the original source is Film, performs an Inverse 3:2 pulldown routine (to get the NTSC 60i content back to 23.976fps) and simply speeds the film up to 25fps.

The software converters we have access to are most likely the older Field Blending type. These don't use motion vector technology but result in a picture with more motion blur.

Hi again. Just one more thing, Dave. As mentioned the PAL version looks blurry compared to the original. I'm wondering, if I was to watch this PAL verrsion on a PAL television and PAL dvd player, would there be a noticeable improvement, since the settings would be more closely matched?

Now that brings up an interesting point. What are you watching the PAL conversion on?

If it's a computer monitor, then no, that's a decent facsimile of what you'll see on a PAL TV.

If you're viewing the disc on a TV... I'm assuming that your American TV only supports NTSC. If so, the player is probably doing a botched conversion so the TV can display the disc. So the process then looks like:

If that's the case, it'll most likely look terrible! The best way to check how it looks is to play it back on a studio monitor or TV which supports PAL (not an easy thing to find in North America, I'm told).

"If it's a computer monitor, then no, that's a decent facsimile of what you'll see on a PAL TV."

I played the ntsc and the pal one back to back on my computer, I had the viewer window size at about 600x400 and at that size, the pal version was much closer to the ntsc version in image quality than when I was viewing on my tv.

"The best way to check how it looks is to play it back on a studio monitor or TV which supports PAL"

"So what you're saying is that on your computer monitor, the NTSC and the converted PAL versions look roughly the same?"
I watched it a few more times on my laptop. The pal one is "blurrier" and not as sharp as the ntsc. Colors are the same, and as far as motion they are close. The biggest difference is sharpness. I would say the pal one has maybe 70% of the sharpness that the ntsc one has.
However I could be pickier than a non videophile type. I'm going to see if a non video phile type can take a look and get their opinion.